BRANDON – Vertical tillage is not a drastic departure for producers who regularly perform some type of cultivation.
However, it might be the compromise that 100 percent zero till producers are looking for as they try to get rid of excess water while still maintaining surface residue.
Roger Burak, a diversification technician with Manitoba Agriculture, told a Manitoba Ag Days workshop that horizontal tools with shanks, shovels, plows or harrows create a compaction layer, or smear layer, just below the working tool.
Roots and surface water find it difficult to penetrate this layer and water standing on the surface cannot percolate down into the soil profile.
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A further problem is that roots hit this layer and then spread out sideways. Shallow roots can’t access moisture and nutrients below the smear layer, causing lodging and poor yields.
“If we can use vertical tillage tools to break through that smear or hardpan, we can let that excess surface water infiltrate deep into the soil,” said Burak, who also farms near Arborg, Man.
“Vertical tillage tools are coulter type implements that slice vertically through the smear layer and break up the hardpan.”
Breaking up the compaction layer also aerates the soil at the surface so it dries faster.
Vertical tillage machines can run through standing water to break up the hardpan that’s holding water at the surface. In many cases, the standing water is gone the next day, say farmers with experience in the practice.
“In wet, muddy conditions, vertical till machines are probably better than a disc or deep tiller,” Burak said.
“The problem with those traditional implements is they plug with mud. They try to move a lot of soil, and when that soil is wet, you get big clumps you’ll have to deal with later.
“With a vertical tillage machine, you’re not moving much soil at all. You’re creating cuts down through the smear and fluffing up the top couple of inches.”
Burak said he wouldn’t run deeper than three or four inches, even if the field was extremely wet.
He said vertical till is used most often on a stubble field, which should be fairly smooth. As a result, a single pass should be adequate to create a good seedbed. A second shallow pass in the spring may be needed if there are bad ruts from the combines.
Burak lined up field demonstrations last year in Manitoba’s northern Interlake, which is notorious for wet fields. He also tried 40 acres on his own farm.
“I deep tilled this field earlier to try dry it out, so there were lots of lumps.
“One pass with the vertical tillage machine smashed them up and cut them down to particle size. In my view, we probably could have gone in and seeded right away.
“If we wanted an absolutely perfect seedbed, one pass with harrows would have done the trick. But I think that if you run the vertical tillage machine shallow and fast, you shouldn’t need a second pass in most situations.”
He said sales representatives from implement manufacturers agree that wavy discs provide more disturbance at the surface and better drying, but he hasn’t seen research to support this.
Burak’s presentation struck home with at least one producer at the workshop.
“It’s not true and pure zero-till anymore, but maybe it gets rid of enough of that water that I can get my seeding done without ripping up my fields,” he asaid.
Although the dozen or more vertical tillage units on the market appear similar, Burak said producers should consider a number of factors:
angle of the coulters determines the amount of soil disturbance more waves per blade and deeper waves cause more soil disturbance
blade spacing affects residue incorporation
thicker blades are better for stony ground
weight balance front to rear affects soil penetration
gang coulters create equal pressure, better for smooth fields
independent coulters follow better in stony ground or rough terrain
